


Hold Tightly

by Diary



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bechdel Test Fail, Bisexual Bran Stark, Bisexual Male Character, Bottle Episode Fic, Canon Disabled Character, Declarations Of Love, Established Jojen Reed/Bran Stark, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Insecurity, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, Male Friendship, POV Bisexual Character, POV Bran Stark, POV Male Character, Pansexual Character, Pansexual Jojen Reed, Post-Season/Series 03 AU, Romance, Self-Reflection, Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 02:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17716397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: AU. A late night conversation between an insecure, troubled Bran and a patient Jojen.





	Hold Tightly

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Game of Thrones.

Bran had thought he’d truly moved past all anger, sadness, and bitterness over his body’s limitations.

The hanging bar is above his bed, his chair is right beside the bed, and he can easily get himself into the chair by now.

However, Jojen is wrapped warmly around him underneath the furs, and he can’t figure out a way to get out of bed without waking him. He might be wrong, he knows, but he can’t help but think, if he were able to move his legs, he could slip past the arms and quietly out of bed. He could move on soft feet rather than loud, clanking wheels.

Summer is asleep, and there’s no time or place he has a particular desire to take his mind to at the moment.

Closing his eyes, he tries to will dawn to come when he feels Jojen moving. “Your thoughts are heavy. Is something wrong?”

He reopens his eyes, and turning his head, the fire burning steadily in the fireplace makes Jojen’s pale eyes almost unbearably soft and warm. “No. Did I wake you?”

Shaking his head, Jojen props himself up on his elbow before kissing him.

It’s such a simple action, but it always makes his heart warm within his chest in a way far different than kisses from his family and Meera. Sometimes, it’s obvious why; he wouldn’t want certain types of kisses he and Jojen share to happen with his family or even people not his family. Some of them, however, like this one, are relatively chaste, and he isn’t sure why the happiness is so different.

It also makes him wish he could see the future.

‘Unlike the past, the future is largely unwritten. Just as you can rarely alter the ink of the past, you can only see the few things written of the future,’ Blood Raven had told him.

He knows he and Jojen won’t be together until their last days. Jojen is heir to House Reed, and he himself will likely be called upon to continue the Stark line. Jon refuses to call himself a Stark, and both Arya and Sansa are unlikely to marry.

Arya loves travelling, and she’s never said it, but he knows she’s afraid she’ll be a bad mother; there are times she’ll get violently angry for reasons others can’t understand. He remembers how she used to love playing with common children, and now, whenever they’re around, she’ll either stick to the shadows or take herself far away from them.

Tyrion Lannister was kind to Sansa, but after being married to him against her will in addition to what Joffrey did to her, she’s happy right now to help Jon rule. She’s polite to would-be suitors, but even the bravest and most handsome knights and lords can’t make her truly smile the way he, Arya, and Jon can.

As for him, someday, there will be a woman who doesn’t mind his lameness, and he’ll try to be a good husband to her the same way his father largely was to his mother. They’ll have children, and Sansa and Jon, at least, will do everything he can’t: Teach any boys to climb, ride, wield a sword and bow, and swim. Carry any girls when they need it, teach them to dance and swim, and if any of them are like Arya, teach them along with any of their brothers.

He just wishes he knew when exactly he and Jojen are going to end. Maybe, knowing would make the hurt a little less. It’s the wondering of when and the hope of, perhaps, it won’t happen that he has to push away that hurts the most.

“I cried when I saw you’d lost your legs.”

Startled, he looks over.

Settling on his side, Jojen frowns. “I woke up from a nightmare I couldn’t remember. Then, some time later, I saw you looking down at your legs and touching them. I realised what this meant about the same time you did. I couldn’t feel your anger, pain, and fear, but I could see it. I felt it for you.”

“I’m not thinking about my legs. Or not fully.”

“Are you worried about your family?”

“No.” Finding one of Jojen’s hands, he links their fingers together. “Let’s get back to sleep.”

“It won’t bother me if you want to be alone with your thoughts.”

He doesn’t want to be like Arya. He was once, but he’d thought he’d grown out of that part of himself. He doesn’t want to be irritable and outright angry for reasons he can barely sort out in his own head, never mind that he might not be able to say aloud.

Him leaving bed isn’t the heart of it, he knows. Maybe, Jojen wouldn’t mind if his getting out did wake Jojen, and perhaps, he could get back into bed without further disturbing Jojen’s sleep.

Jojen so often knows when he’s angry or sad, and usually, Jojen knows just what to do to help him.

If he was talking about Jojen, he’d say Jojen is a calm person who often sees the good of the world.

In private, sometimes, he wonders if Jojen is truly this, or if he’s simply largely unable to see when Jojen isn’t.

“Don’t all the things I’m not able to do for you ever bother you,” he finds himself blurting out.

Confusion is the main feeling on Jojen’s face. “If this is about you not being able to walk, I know how happy it’d make you if you could. If there was any possible way- but you can’t do that for anyone, least of all yourself. And if this is about protection, even if you could be a knight, I’d still place our safety in the hands of our sisters and Lady Brienne before you.”

A small part of him is offended, but he finds himself laughing. It’s not as if he can truthfully argue against the fact Arya, Meera, and Maid Tarth are amongst the best fighters in the North.

“I would, too.”

Jojen’s small smile is- beautiful but painful to see.

“It’s not about either of those things.”

“Then what?”

Leaving would likely be the coward’s way. He has to give some answer, and it has to have some truth to it.

Osha’s ashes were sprinkled over and around Rickon’s statue, and there are times he’ll look back at various points in her life. He hasn’t yet found any points where trying to make a change would result in things being better for her, and sometimes, he desperately wishes he could simply talk to her the way he once did.

But then, truthfully, talking to her about either of his biggest problems when it comes to Jojen- She didn’t like Jojen, and she might have had a strong reaction of disgust or anger to him being with a man in such a way.

His mother might have been accepting. She knew his Great-Uncle preferred men exclusively, and though disapproving, she loved and respected him. Unfortunately, he knows, if his father were still alive, he and Jojen wouldn’t be able to be. His visions of the past have shown his father saying incredibly hurtful things about such men.

Meera is the only one genuinely happy he’s with Jojen, and there are certain things he’s never going to talk to her about when it comes to her brother. Arya is happy he’s happy, but otherwise, she has little care. Sansa is what his mother might have been. And Jon- well, after finding out about them, Jon had dragged Jojen away to tell him exactly what he’d do if he (Bran) was ever hurt, but after this, Jon’s been largely indifferent.

“Do you ever fear what your father would do if he finds out about us?”

“No. He’ll like you. You’re Ned Stark’s son, and in many of the important ways, you’re like your father was. And even if he worries about me, he trusts Meera’s judgement. She’ll assure him of your affection and good intentions for and towards me.”

You make it sound as if it’s certain he will know, goes through his head.

“He won’t care about the fact we’re both men?”

Jojen shakes his head. “You’ve seen him. Father’s always been what many consider odd. When I started having fits and we all thought they’d be with me for the rest of my life, he started preparing for me to one day be a maester, and he talked with pride of how I’d be a great one someday. And the reason he’s never arranged a marriage for Meera is that he’s waiting for the day she tells him she’s ready to be married. If that day comes, he’ll find suitable choices, but the final say will be largely hers.”

For all this is true, since Leaf and her clan promised not to send Jojen anymore visions, Jojen hasn’t had anymore fits. He still isn’t a fighter, but he could be, if he wanted. He knows, now, any children he has are extremely unlikely to be afflicted with fits the way he was.

He might be wrong, but he imagines his father was taking the same approach with Arya. Sansa, in the world they once lived in, she needed and wanted a good husband to take care of her and give her children, and their father tried his best to fulfil his fatherly duties in making sure she’d have this.

“Are you worried about meeting my father? You really needn’t be. As soon as my uncle and his family arrive in the Neck to rule in his stead, he’ll come here, and he’ll pledge fealty to your brother. I imagine he’ll bring you a gift, too.”

When he first met the Reed siblings, there were times he felt incredibly childish when talking to them.

Now, Jojen isn’t being childish, but there’s something boyish in his words and face. He’s looking forward to seeing his father, and he truly believes, in addition to his father bringing presents for him and Meera (Lord Reed will, Bran knows enough about the man to have no doubt about this), his father might be happy to meet the person responsible for both his children leaving home and almost getting killed several times over.

Even without the fact he and Jojen are together in a way many would deride, Lord Howland Reed has plenty of non-hateful reasons to potentially mislike him.

“If you think I’m unhappy about something with you, I’m not. If you think I have reason to be, you’re wrong. Are you unhappy?”

“No, of course not,” he answers. Hating the traces of doubt on Jojen’s face, he sighs. “You’re the one who’s wrong. I can’t do so many things. Things you can do. In bed. You give me so much pleasure, and I can’t return most of it.”

Shortly after Osha had been brought to Winterfell, he’d been angry about something, he’s not even sure what, and he’d ended up snapping out at Maester Luwin about how any marriage he managed to get might end up annulled due to him not being able to do what was needed to make babies. Osha had come over before Maester Luwin could respond, sat down, and forced him to look in her eyes.

She’d told him he’d be able to be with a woman when he was older, that if his man parts could make water, they could deliver his seed.

Years later, he’d had messy dreams, and the few times he’d been able to catch some privacy, he’d discovered the joy touching himself below the waist could bring.

When he and Jojen started kissing and touching one another, they were both virgins. They’ve learned different sort of things they can do to one another, but many of those things, though Jojen can easily do them to him, he can’t easily do them back. Some of them, it’s a matter of he _could_ , but it’d require Jojen to contort and hold his body in ways that would become uncomfortable quickly, and some of them, without being able to fully move, he physically can’t.

Jojen should mind this. He should want someone who can fully return pleasure to him.

He can’t even do something as simple as fully hold Jojen against him or be held by Jojen in such a way.

“Bran. The first time we kissed, I didn’t know whether you could- if the fall effected anything besides your legs. I just wanted to be with you as much as possible.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Hesitation enters Jojen’s face. Then, quieter than normal, he says, “I love you.”

Warmth overtakes his whole body, and he doesn’t think he’s been this happy since he was able to climb. Pulling Jojen closer, he kisses him. “I love you, too.”

It hits him how big this is. He knew Jojen and Meera had grown to love him, and he’s loved them for a long time, but until this moment, the words have never been said between him and Jojen.

“New books are coming to Winterfell every few months,” Jojen says. “We can surely find some more about different things we can do. Just don’t think I feel you get more than I do. I’m happy with what you do to me and what I can do to you. The most important thing is that we’re together.”

Thoughts of marriage enter his head, and he wishes- there are non-Westerosi places where there are marriages between two men or two women, and visions of the past have shown Westerosi men with men and women with women handfasting, making vows in godswoods or with hands on the Seven-Pointed Star, and simply declaring themselves wife and wife or husband and husband.

He doesn’t know if there are any people in the present who do such a thing, and unless someone tells him or he hears news, he’s unlikely to; people who are dead, he doesn’t see any reason he shouldn’t go to certain places in their lives, but even then, some places, he has no right to see, and when it comes to the living, he has to be careful not to let himself become a remorseless spy.

A yawn overtakes him, and he finds himself ready to sleep. He and Jojen will end one day, but for now, they love one another. He wants to hold onto what he has while he still has it.

“Thank you, Jojen,” he murmurs. “For talking until things became clearer. I’m ready for sleep, now.”

Nodding, Jojen kisses him. “I am, too. Pleasant dreams, Bran. I love you.”

“Pleasant dreams, Jojen. I love you, too.”

He falls asleep with the feeling of slumbering Jojen wrapped warmly around him underneath the furs.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: The bit about Ned is something for readers to make their own mind up about. Bran saw a moment in younger Ned's life, and he believes both that Ned believed everything Ned was saying and held onto to such thoughts and feelings for the rest of his life. The idea Ned's feelings and thoughts changed or that the normally kind and straightforward but still imperfect and human Ned ended up saying things Ned didn't agree with hasn't occurred to him.


End file.
